Are You Smarter Than A Raccoon? - The Northern Raccoon

Several years ago I went camping at the Myakka River State Park. After a campfire dinner we took a walk down to the river to look at the stars and watch for gators. When we returned to our seats around the campfire we were showered with garbage! In the short time we were gone we had been raided by one of the locals, a Northern Raccoon (Procyon lotor), who had grabbed our garbage and dragged it up into the safety of an oak. There it sat eating our leftovers and hurling bun wrappers and bean cans at us. Not very smart.

I took an airboat ride in the Everglades a few years back. Raccoons live on and around the islands and take advantage of the tides where they hunt for crabs, eggs and whatever else they may find. The boat captain pulled up to a mangrove island and pointed out a raccoon on the shore. “There’s plenty to eat here, but for some reason this one is always here every day so I feed him marshmallows.” Not very smart.

On the boardwalk at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary two women noticed a raccoon sitting in the water. One explained that they only live around dumpsters. The other nervously suggested it might be rabid and they should leave. Not very smart.

They walked off and the mother and the rest of the raccoon clan peeked out and continued poking and prodding the mud for invertebrates and other snacks. They were healthy raccoons. They were just in their natural environment.

At a local Florida beach, a teenager watched a raccoon climb a garbage can, lift the lid and pull out the garbage he had just placed in it. Incredulous, he turned to a gathering crowd and explained he had put the lid on it and doesn’t know how the raccoon did it. Not very smart.

Raccoons are found across North America. They’re adaptable, versatile, intelligent creatures who despite the reputation for carrying rabies as well as raiding our garbage cans are doing what any other species is doing. Surviving. As omnivores they have a full menu to choose from plus they have the dexterity, agility and intelligence to adapt to just about any environment.

In other words – pretty smart.

2010 - The Year in Scat

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

The same can be said for poop in a sense. Call it scat, droppings, excrement, dung, feces, manure, guano. It’s still poop. Calling it sweet might be a stretch.

I’m fascinated by animal scat. Absent of the animal, it tells us who passed by, when they passed by and what they ate. It comes in many telling shapes and sizes and sometimes it’s downright artistic. Here are my favorites in descending order.

10) The armadillo is my holy grail of scat – I know they poop. I’ve just never found any.

9) Most of the time I can make an educated guess. Sometimes it remains a mystery. This large pile was found just north of the Everglades. Coarse black hairs suggest a feral pig was eaten. I’m thinking Florida Panther.

8) Scat names can be species specific. If it came from a bat it’s called guano. In most parts of North America it’s easy to differentiate from rodent droppings of the same size. Bats eat insects with chitinous exoskeletons which do not get completely digested when passed in droppings. Under a bright flashlight the insect pieces sparkle.

7) American Black Bears range all throughout North America and as omnivores, have the luxury of feasting on whatever is on the outdoor buffet. A fresh crop of acorns from the Florida oaks have helped fatten up the bears for winter. A large pile of poop adorned with bits of acorn is the tell tail sign.

6) Turkeys enjoy a wide range of foods as well, including acorns and insects. This lovely arrangement of comma shaped droppings has evidence of an abundance of plant matter.

5) Domestic and wild cats have the good grace to cover up their scats with varying results. This bobcat scrapped some grass together to cover a bone and fur amalgam of poop.

4) Manatees are herbivores that feed on up to 100 lbs of vegetation a day. They’re gassy and they poop a lot. Manatees are rare and endangered and the sea is their toilet bowl. Finding a Manatee scat is a treasure.

3) Insects poop too as evidenced by the droppings from this juvenile Eastern Lubber grasshopper.

2) I believe Shakespeare was referring to otter poop when he noted “all that glitters is not gold”. Otters are from the mustelid family and have droppings that range from sweet smelling to rotten fish. They feast primarily on fish and their scat is uniquely filled with sparkling, undigested fish scales.

1) What do you get when you mix American Beauty Berry with a Raccoon? Art. You’re welcome. Happy New Year. 

Armadillo Poop

Do you have any idea what Armadillo poop looks like? Depending on the species, the age, the size and even the gender of an animal - scat can be varied but there are certain ways to identify who pooped and I'm fairly good at it, but I've never considered Armadillo poop.

A night hike in the western cypress swamps of the Everglades turned up a few interesting piles on Saturday night and a walk across one of the levees that stretches into the Everglades on the east coast from Miami on Monday revealed a few more droppings. Coyotes are making their way into southern Florida and their scat can be identified by the relatively large size of the poop.

This one was about 4 inches long and full of hair and bones. They usually leave it right in the middle of the trail for others to find. Marked with their unique scent - it's essentially a coyote's e-mail - butt mail as it were. That's how they communicate with other coyotes. There are about 400 or so Black Bears in the Big Cypress area of the Everglades (SW corner). They do poop in the woods but also on the trails like this massive pile we found while hiking at night. It probably could have filled my baseball hat. It was full of saw palmetto berries and other vegetation which makes up a good portion of their omnivorous diet.

Otter poop is so unique it gets its own name. They call it spraint and it has a very musky odor. I actually got down on hands and knees to take a whiff, which I don't think is as odd as someone coming up with a word for otter poop. The other easy identifier is the circular bits in the poop. Fish scales. Otters eat crabs and fish for the most part but the fish scales are not digested and get left behind. Fantastic. Another easy way to identify scat is if you actually see it coming out of the animal. Had the Raccoon not just pooped, I might have startled it enough to do so. I was alone on this walk so there is no need to admit that the startled raccoon leaping off the levee into the sawgrass caused any such reaction in me.

This Raccoon scat is full of palmetto and other berries. Nowhere near as much in the pile as the Bear but just as ornate and textured. And then there is the Nine-banded Armadillo. First let me point out that you should pronounce it Arm-uh-dee-yo. Few say it right if you ask me. Next time you go to a Mexican restaurant ask for tor-till-uh chips. You wouldn't. You'd say tor-tee-ya. So say Arm-uh-dee-ya. But I digress.
My hike brought me one and a half miles from pavement where I was the only human being within 3 square miles. Staring down at my GPS - I ambled along and nearly kicked this Armadillo. They have terrible eye sight, horrible hearing and a fairly good sense of smell. When this one was within 2 feet of me - it sniffed the air, snorted and popped a foot in the air before darting off into the scrub. Unlike other Armadillos - the Nine-banded flees as opposed to curling up into a ball.

It surprised me to see it out here. They eat grubs, ants and other insects but this area seemed too desolate of a landscape for the Armadillo to find enough food and yet here it was. I knew there were raccoons and otters out here. I saw their scat. But I hadn't seen any signs of Armadillos and I wondered - "What does Armadillo poop look like?"

Sweet Mother Gator

So startled was I when the mother gator hissed and lunged that I tripped over my own feet and nearly plunged into the water with the mother gator while - yes - trying to run away.

I knew mama gator was around. She's in the same spot nearly everyday, protecting the nest of eggs under the dock. But alligators can make some incredibly loud noises and this 9 foot mama is no exception. Nesting started at the end of June and it takes 63 days or so to incubate so mama will stay put, driving away raccoons, possum, snakes and birds that will try to eat the eggs. She has to be wary of any males that may wander through and eat the babies after they hatch.
The dock that she nests under is taped off to keep tourists out. I was on the dock taking a picture of a grasshopper near the nest when mama let me know I was too close.
For the best results - turn the volume up before playing the video. This was her second attempt to drive me away after my heart rate had settled.

Pig Chicken

There are few things that I fear. Dropping my keys down a storm drain is one. Clowns including mimes. Stumbling into a beehive is another. For anti-phalactic reasons. But my greatest fear is unpredictable animal behavior and there are few as unpredictable as pigs.

My latest adventure brought me to Alligator Creek at the Port Charlotte Environmental Center. It's unstaffed presently because no one in their right mind would slog through the flooded trails and mosquito inhabited salt marshes of this park in September. But flowers bloom, mushrooms grow and you never know what you'll see unless you get out and experience it and so I did.

American Beauty berries color the palmetto scrub lands purple and while they may be tasty treats to the raccoons, the cellulose seed coverings are not easily digested and make for nice crap adornments. It's the height of the rainy season. Everything is wet. Everything is rotting and decomposing.

Vestiges of a front lawn flower garden?

From beginning to end, the trail is under 3-12 inches of water. Here I had to ford across ankle deep, tanic-acid stained water. No worries except for the occasional raft of red ants that have become swamped and now float to dry refuge.

Mosquitoes I can deal with. But this scene concerns me. Not only do pigs, (which were introduced by the Spaniards 500 years ago) create an environmental mess as they dig for grubs, they have not standard practice for fleeing which I find unacceptable. When approached, they run in any direction and on occasion straight at me. No pigs sighted yet, but I know they are here.

A snort and a "wuuuuueeeeeee" followed by crashing through the palmettos makes me stop in my tracks. There's a big pig, nearly 2.5-3 feet tall, palm-brown fur providing excellent camo. If it has tusks I'll be even more nervous.The next one is obviously a female and I spook her from her resting spot. It's hot and they lie in the mud and this one darts up and runs away - stops and then charges through the palms. I grab a rotten oak branch, look for the nearest tree to climb and wait. She stops again when I scream an obscenity and she heads in the opposite direction.

There's a year round season on pigs here and as I get to the furthest point on the loop trail I hear a gun shot. Could I have entered a park where hunting is allowed and I ignored the signs? Now I'm really nervous and feeling stupid, so I slosh loudly through the flooded trail and shout more obscenities at the pigs. They leave me alone, but it reminds me of the differences between hiking in Vermont and here in Florida. Snakes, Pigs, Bugs, Gators - there's no shortage of things to keep aware of. But that's what makes it an adventure! It turns out that hunting is off limits in the park, thus the concentration of pigs along my route. They're not stupid! Neither am I, but I am a chicken when it comes to pigs.

Signs of Laziness

Jungle Pete is returning North - if only for a few days to visit the family and anyone else he can round up. He's also practicing speaking in the third person for no apparent reason. Pete can't leave without writing one more time, but seeing as he's been tying up loose ends at work before he goes, he hasn't had time to put together a cohesive thought. So Pete presents to you a few of the crazy signs he's seen on my exploits. I mean his exploits. They didn't really fit anywhere else so here they are.
Is it me or does the proprietor seem a little peeved with the police? Hey Police! You are on notice! (Naples, FL)

This one was put up after a raccoon swung a club and lost the grip, sending a 9-iron through the windshield of a BMW. (Cape Coral, FL)

I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know if this is a goof or if there are "land crabs" I need to worry about running over. I'd hate to think I was needlessly concerned. (Hollywood, FL)

It's hard enough to go 12 MPH, but this is impossible. The squirrel looks a bit flat already. (Punta Gorda, FL)

This one I think I may have posted before - but it bears repeating. (Did I say bear and but in the same sentence.) (LaBelle, FL)
This is a bonus. This is called the Cape Coral Tower of Terror. It was constructed by Rotary volunteers and has withstood hurricanes, high winds and poor construction. It's not trick photography. It really looks like an Eischer drawing. It's listing and shakes when you go up it. How it has not collapsed is beyond me.

Ok - this is perhaps the worst entry to date, but it's really just an announcement of my temporary departure from Florida. I'm looking forward to seeing new nephew Carter and the rest of the nieces and nephews. I'll be in Vermont on Thursday 9/6 for anyone who wishes to gather at the Long Trail Pub and Brewery in Bridgewater, VT.

Pete and Sam Harass Iguanas

I blame my Aunt Anne for not warning my cousin Sam. She reads this blog and should certainly know what a visit to my place might be like for a 16 year old kid. Soy milk in the fridge, air-conditioner set to 83, heat-saving haircuts for the cats. So when Sam arrived on Saturday night I was worried that he'd be ready to leave by Sunday morning, but he's taken it all in stride and today we embarked on our first Everglades adventure. Danger and all. (CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ENLARGE)The huge 12 foot alligators seem to be hiding, but this doe-eyed 4 foot gator was the first to pose for Sam. (Photo by Sam)

Every Monday morning at 6:30 am I drive across the Everglades for work in Fort Lauderdale. After work we headed to Greynolds Park in North Miami to search for American Crocodiles. World-renowned herpetologist Tom Crutchfield suggested this was the place to search for the endangered (and native) crocs. There are only 2000 or so in Florida and he's seen them here before, but he warned the heat keeps them off the banks and in the water. But we might see a few non-native Iguanas. (Photo by Sam)

A smaller 3 foot Green Tree Iguana (Photo by Sam)

I went out on a limb (mangrove) to get this shot. If they felt threatened - they would plummet up to 20 feet into the water to escape. It's fun harassing Iguanas! (NOTE - As far as I know, only the people of Boca Grande encourage harassing the destructive, non-native iguanas. We weren't harassing these. By our standards)

A young Green Tree Iguana (Photo by Sam)

I need to find out what this non-native lizard is (Photo by Sam)

Annoyed, this Cuban Anole flashed his red dewlap to show who was boss.

Escape from the land of the creepy dudes. We apparently strolled down the wrong trail. Not sure why that 300 lb guy with a Fu Manchu was wearing nothing but Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots way back here in the woods. Bridge looks unsafe? No problem. We are out of here.

Everglades raccoons abound here! Feeding on the delicious McDonald's leftovers. We watched 4 of them wrestle over a BBQ dipping sauce. They're lovin' it.

(Photo by Sam)

"Hey - where did the bald guy go?" (Photo by Sam)

"There he is - can't I eat my McDonald's in peace?" (Photo by Sam)

"sniff sniff - I smell Honey Mustard" (Photo by Sam)

White-lipped Tree Frogs

The trail led us along the edges of a brackish mangrove forest where the errant step led us face to face with female Orb Weavers and their diminutive male counterparts.

A nice muddy trip down the roads along the canals in the Everglades and my truck is looking good. Go ahead and poop on it bird! It can't get dirtier.

A nice parting shot.